A Bonus Sunday Evening! Jazz and Grub.

Sunday 4th May is not an Abbey Jazz night (being the in-between week), but you could still get your fix of small band swing, by travelling over the misty mountains to Colwall. As it's a bank holiday on the Monday, you can also look forward to a lie-in the next morning!

From 7pm till 11pm we bring you Phil Probert's Jazzmates, with guest singer Ruth Frith, and a scrumptious curry buffet. (For those who worry about curry, dont! There will be a nice mild version specially for you!)

The venue is the Colwall Park Hotel, and the line-up Rod Kelly (pno), Len Thwaites (bs), Phil Probert (gtr) and Martin Emeny (dms). When we took this band to the Pershore Festival last year, it went down a storm. For those who haven't heard Ruth Frith, she's got a great repertoire of lively stuff and ballads, and I never get tired of working with her.

The cost of this special evening is £15 per head, and I can promise you a really good feed as well as a great evening of jazz, courtesy of hosts Iain and Sarah Nesbitt, who run a prize-winning kitchen at The Park.

Don't suffer a jazzless weekend - munch and bop in Colwall. Phone the Colwall Park on 01684 540000 to be sure of your table.

Coming up - 13th April - Return of the Swindon Mafia!

With memories of 2nd March (see review) still fresh in the mind, we bring you Mssrs Alan Bateman and Frank Abrams again, this time partnered by Richard Leach on trombone. Every time Alan comes, we have fireworks, and I've a feeling this will be no exception. Rod Kelly (who can look after himself in the ruck along with the best of them) will be on piano. Barry Norman will be percussing, Len Thwaites bassing and Phil Probert twanging. Don't be late!

30th March Sax Orgy. Williams-Pearce Ripper!

There were saxes of every shape and size on offer this Sunday, and a packed house once again. It's been so good to see so many of you there, but keep telling your friends about us, as there is still room for a few more at the back!

Chris Pearce (soprano/clarinet) and Cliff Williams (tenor/clarinet) were the booked attractions, and were joined for part of the session by John Ripper (see last time's review) on baritone. The session took a couple of numbers to get into its stride, but once it did, we had a night did we not?

Oddly enough, it took a slow blues (Texas Moaner) to ignite things, and many of the best numbers of the evening turned out to be the slow ones. Cliff gave us a perfect rendering of Nancy With the Laughing Face, a la Coltrane. It was my third gig with Cliff in a week, and I can tell you, every one a real pleasure. The guy combines taste and inventiveness with a tone like honey.

Chris scored a second-half equaliser with his version of Willow Weep for Me. I happen to know that this is one he saves for the big occasions, so we can feel flattered at Spring Lane. At the risk of repetition, the great pleasure of working behind Chris is his taste and good judgement, which has one listening hard and savouring the ideas that emerge.

And of course we had the treat of John Ripper getting up with the big gun, and contributing most fluently. John springs from a big band background, and a lot of what we played last evening was not familiar to him - not that you'd have known.

In the engine room we had Graham Smith on drums, Len and me. Graham is not only a great drummer, he has wit - he gets a certain look in his eye and you know he's going to work some little trick that'll leave you grinning. Working without a piano man was by way of an experiment, to see whether this lets a two-man front line stand out more clearly. Tell us what you think.

The evening finished on a high as we rocked through a couple of dixieland traddie ones, which (judging by the bopping I could see at various tables) seemed to send everyone home smiling.

Thanks to everyone who came up after the gig to say they'd had fun! That's what makes Malvern special for your musicians!

Sorry there are no pix this week - the box Brownie must have been on the blink!

Wot's On? March 30th

Next time, we promise you an evening of hot steamy sax.

We'll have Chris Pearce and Cliff Williams and that should be another winning combination.

See you there folks.

Pipkin-Turner Thriller

Your blog now operates in glorious technicolour, and to prove it here are a couple of pix, including the Boss, who has just had his bass fiddle glued back together, which may account for his serious expression as he tries to get his fingers unstuck from the instrument.

Well, we promised you a night of treats, and that's how it turned out. With Tony Pipkin (tpt) and Mike Turner (reeds) both in top form, we got an evening that combined classic favourites like That's a Plenty with smooth ballads. And it was great to see a full clubroom after the foul weather of the last few days.

From inside the rhythm section, you always get a feeling from the first number whether the line-up is going to click. And that's how it was this time. The session was fun to play from start to finish, with some real highlights. My favourites - Tony and Ken Jones (pno) giving us She's Funny That Way as a duo, and a demonstration of how to impress with understated elegance and taste. And Mike Turner giving us I Wish You Love, not only in impeccable French but, as the Italians would say, con alma.

We also had the pleasure of a new talent emerging from the audience, in the form of John Ripper on tenor sax. John moved to Malvern last year and has been a regular member of the audience at Spring Lane. He turned up with his sax last night and gave us plenty to remember him by. I'm sure we will see him again.

Thanks again to everyone (including Ken Wright on drums). And a final mention to the secret dancers, who were jigging in the corridor during the last number, where they thought nobody could see them. Good to see that a bunch of aging musicians can still get the crowd on its feet!

TTFN.

Have Your Say!

Now we are a bit more used to running this blog, we've made it easier for you to post comments on what we publish. You no longer have to sign up to Google, so just follow the 'comments' links and see what happens. If you have any problems have a word with Phil Probert on a club night.

Upton Festival Ticket Auction

As we announced last night, the Festival have very kindly gifted us a ticket for two which we propose to auction. I understand this is worth £100 and we will let you know in the near future how we'll be handling the auction. So for the time being, see what you've stuffed behind the kitchen clock and consider your bids, the proceeds of which go towards our running costs for your enjoyment.

Abbey Jazz Coming Up - 16th March

Next time up, we bring you Tony Pipkin on various brass thingies from trumpet to flugel, paired with Mike Turner on clarinet and soprano sax. These are two guys who are at home with a wide range of jazz, so we look forward to an evening of treats. Your rhythm section will be Ken Jones (piano), Ken Wright (drums), Phil Probert (guitar) and Len Thwaites (bass).

As we've been enjoying nearly full houses at the rugby club so far this year, we urge you to be there in good time and look forward to seeing you.

Thrash Metal Trad

Over a quiet pint at the bar before we started, Frank Abrams (clarinet, soprano and tenor saxes) said something along the lines of how nice it was to come to Malvern and play relaxed swing music. You'd think he'd know better given that his mate Alan Bateman (trumpet, soprano and baritone sax) was standing behind him. Yes, that Alan Bateman - the one reknowned for the rapidity of his stomp-ins and persistent cruelty to banjo players. Over another pint in the interval, Frank Abrams and I were trying to put a label on what we'd been attempting. We decided that Thrash Trad wouldn't be far wide of the mark!

It was a fun session, with risks taken and, I think, rewarded. Frank gave us some great solos on all three of his reeds, and reminded us of his very personal style (especially on the tenor) - a great mix of melodic inventiveness and just a hint of early fifties blues or rock that adds spice. Alan Bateman just gets better and better. The appearance of his baritone sax was a rare treat - and boy, can he honk! The rhythm section (Ken Jones, Nick Millward, Phil Probert and Len Thwaites) chugged along happily behind these guys and it was fun to play a mix of dixieland and swing for a nice full room.

The playlist for the evening included some innovations - including Strutting with Some Barbecue played as a bossa, and some great scat singing from Nick Millward . Those of you who didn't run screaming from the room will also have noted the intriguing dis-arrangement of Aint No Sin, in which we experimented with free form, bebop-style jazz. (And you thought we were just getting the chords and words wrong....)

It was a great evening to be playing behind two exciting and creative guys and we look forward to having them return.

Ye Greate Electricitie Cock-Up

One returns from slaving over a hot beach in St Lucia to find that in ones absence, our loyal clients have been subjected to the disappointment of missing their fortnightly fix. It seems the culprit was some key electrical installation on the nearby industrial estate. Very much a one-off, we gather, but one attended by an heroic performance by Peter Doran who stood in freezing temperatures to greet people as they arrived, and to send them home to a hot toddy and their slippers! Peter is hereby promoted to Hero of The Soviet Union, First Class.

Sincere regrets to all who turned up and were disappointed, but we hope and trust this won't happen again.